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Friday, 3 January 2014

Demon Mist

A group of friends decide to
throw a private party in an abandoned cabin in a middle of nowhere. Did they
stumble into a strange place where evil sleeps or was evil just waiting to turn
this party into a nightmare? Produced and directed by Jason Wright, Demon Mist
is a 3min short film contender for ‘The Who’s There Challenge 2013 Competition’
run by BloodyCuts.co.uk. With a perfect setting to a classic plot, Demon Mist
is certainly an edgy, gory, survival horror that ticks all the conventions of a
horror short.

Quite often short, indie or even
feature horror films have an elusive intriguing plot that sadly turns out to be
unthreatening and portray the story with dull execution. Worst case scenario
the horror turns out to be an unforeseen comedy that college or university
students end up turning the horror/comedy into a drinking game. The key to a
great horror doesn’t have to rely on a good idea with an eerie atmosphere and
grotesque images. It is the psychological impact that would back more of a
punch then the cheap scares. It is the ability to mess with the viewer’s mind
and make him or her leave the cinema thinking “How the hell am I going to sleep
tonight?” One of the first horrors I remember watching as a young curious lad
is Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw
Massacre (1974). The films tagline “Who will survive and what will be left
of them?” gives a vital clue to a good horror. It is the unexpected rhythm of
watching the characters killed off unpredictably that gives a fantastic
atmosphere of an uncertainty to who would survive.

Demon Mist has the classic idea of young dumb groups of friends who want to get drunk in a location where they can’t get any signal on their phones or find help in case of emergencies. The scary and eerily scratchy atmosphere of creepy sounds of wild life tells us “no one is around to hear you scream.” Unfortunately like most low budget short films it is easy to tell with special effects that the production value is quite low and we lose the illusion. Demon Mist obviously doesn’t have the high end production value but it does have the suspense, blood, violence and it does leave the viewer’s imagination trembling. Demon Mist shows that with a conventional plot, good suspense and gore factor, and also by not revealing the ghost or monster, it makes for a gripping horror short film; proving that the production value and cost is not necessarily the key factor for an entertaining horror movie. To check out more of Silent Studios short films check out their website on